Chapter Text
It had all gone wrong, completely wrong. But then again, it usually did. Cody looked at the pile of smoking rubble that was once their only exit. Dibs had been a little too trigger happy with the rocket launcher.
“Dammit Dibs!” Mixup yelled.
“Sorry!” Dibs yelled back.
“There’s no way through this pile of rock,” Lifter stated as he took stock of the wall of ruble.
“Forget it. We need to find another way out,” Cody said, as he started for the hallway.
It wouldn’t take long for droids to swarm their position inside the palace hangar. Their only option was to head deeper into the building and see if there was another passage to the surface. The palace hangar bay had been built several levels below the main structure, with the hangar door opening out to a cliff face. The hangar door that had been their only way out, until Dibs blew it to smithereens, bringing half the roof down on the battle droids they had encountered.
“Cody? Come in,” Obi-wan’s voice crackled over the comm.
“General,” Cody replied. “Our evac route has been cut off. We’re gonna miss the pick-up.”
“Hmm, that’s not ideal. Things are getting very heated up here.” Obi-wan’s voice sounded strained, the noise of blasters in the background almost drowning him out.
Cody took a deep breath. He knew what he had to do, but it meant condemning himself and his men to an almost certain death.
“General, take the Senator and her son and get out of here,” Cody instructed him. “We won’t make it to your position in time for the pick-up. We’ll find another way out.”
“Cody, it will be almost impossible…”
“With all due respect General, forget about us and finish the mission,” Cody said firmly.
There was a pause from Obi-wan’s end of the comm channel, just the sound of static and the occasional blaster fire. Finally, Obi-wan spoke, “Don’t try and come up, go lower, into the old mining tunnels.”
“Sir?”
“They’ll be expecting you to try to get to the surface through the palace. Go down into the mines, you can find another way out from there,” Obi-wan instructed.
They had been told about the old mining tunnels under the palace during the briefing. Cody had seen at least 3 tunnels that connected the palace to the underground maze. The idea just might work.
“Alright, we’ll go into the mines,” Cody comm’d back to his general.
“And Cody, say hello to our fire angel when you find her down there.”
It was a cryptic message, but Cody thought he understood.
Catrin is in the mines.
Why else would she let Anakin and Ahsoka use her ship to pick up Obi-wan? And why else was she “not a part of this mission” despite sitting in on the mission briefing? Why else was she talking to a Republic Commando unit right before they left for Iima? She had to be down there. This mission up top was a cover for whatever she, their Angel of Fire, was doing down below.
Obi-wan began to say something, “She knows a way...” but the comm line cut off suddenly.
“General? Sir?” Cody tried to raise Obi-wan, then swore. “Kriff! They’re jamming our comms,” he said to his squad.
“Orders, Sir?” Churn asked.
“We’re going down into the mines. Obi-wan seems to think there’s a way out that way,” Cody told them.
He pulled out his holoprojector with the schematics of the palace and brought them up. The others gathered around, one eye on the map, the other on the hallway for any signs of the enemy.
“Here,” Cody pointed to a point on the map. “That’s one of the tunnel entrances. Looks like it should be one level below us, and a short distance from the stairs. Let’s move.”
The clones nodded and headed to the nearest set of stairs, the ones they had used only a few minutes earlier to come up. The tunnel entrance was right where it should have been.
Thank goodness for up-to-date intel, Cody thought to himself.
A large, ominous stone door blocked the tunnel entrance, but the clones quickly got it open. They slipped in past the door and shut it heavily behind them. Once inside the tunnel entrance, it was clear it hadn’t been used for a long time. Each clone trooper turned on his helmet light to illuminate their path in the dark and dusty passageway.
“I hope the General is right,” Dibs said, almost to himself rather than the whole squad, as the five clones descended into the darkness.
They had been descending deeper into the depths of the earth for over an hour. Cody finally stopped them and let them rest. There hadn’t been any signs of droids trying to follow them, at least so far. Cody felt they could risk a short break. They took off their helmets, each one grabbing a drink of water and stuffing a ration bar in their mouths. For a while there was just the sound of them chewing as they each took stock of the situation.
Right now, they each thought they were walking to their doom, with no hope of escape. In the eerie light of their helmet torches, they looked ghostly, like they had already given up and gone to the land of the dead. Cody needed to tell them what Obi-wan’s last instruction actually meant.
“Listen up men. I don’t know if we’ll get out of here, but there is a chance we’ve got some allies in these mines,” Cody began.
“Allies? Down here?” Mixup asked, looking confused.
“Look, it’s clear there’s a second covert part of this mission. One we weren’t supposed to be a part of, or know about. But, when everything went sideways up top, Obi-wan gave me some cryptic instructions to come down into the mines and find Trin. She’s down here, somewhere, maybe even with a Republic Commando unit,” Cody explained.
“Trin is here?” Dibs jumped to his feet at the news.
“With commandos?” Churn remarked.
“Probably. We just gotta figure out how to find them,” Cody said.
He really wished he had one of the special comm devices Catrin had given Rex to contact her with. It always seemed to work, no matter the distance, jamming signals, or whatever, her signal always got through.
Wait, what if… Cody’s mind began to race. Rex is on the ship with Anakin that was meant to pick up me, my men, and of course, Obi-wan. If Obi-wan tells Rex where I am, Rex might tell Trin we’re in the mines. But only if Rex knew that she was on this special mission. What if it was so covert, she didn’t even tell Rex? But if Obi-wan told Anakin the change of plan, surely he’d tell Rex, right? It was a small glimmer of hope. If Catrin knew that Cody and his men were in the mines looking for her, perhaps she might contact them.
“Sir?” Mixup brought Cody back from his thoughts. All the men were looking at him like they were waiting for an answer.
“Sorry, what was that Mixup?” Cody asked.
“I said, how are we going to find her down here?” Mixup repeated.
Cody looked at his comm pad. He pushed a few buttons and set the comm to the secret back channel he used with Catrin and Rex when they wanted to have private conversations without anyone else listening in.
“Well, I guess, we try calling her,” Cody said. He pressed the comm and opened the channel. “Trin. It’s Cody. Do you copy?”
Faint static hummed from his comm pad for a few moments.
“Trin, are you there?” Cody tried again.
More static. Which meant they were likely still inside the droid's jamming field.
“It was worth a shot,” Cody sighed and closed the comm channel. He looked up at his men, and realised they had all stood up and were gathered around him. “We’ll keep going and try again further down. Maybe we’re out of range here.” He said, trying to sound hopeful.
They picked up their gear, put their helmets back on, and continued on their journey downward. They had only been walking for about an hour when the passageway they were travelling down ended in a large vaulted room. They swept their lights around the whole space to ensure they were alone. The only things that remained was old mining equipment, and a few rats. On the far side, three large tunnels continue in different directions.
“Great!” Lifter exclaimed, sarcastically. “How do we know which one to go down?”
“Hey, look!” Mixup pointed to the far left tunnel. “It looks like there’s some kind of faint light coming up from that one.”
“You’re right, there’s some light,” Dibs said, walking towards the opening.
The others followed him over. They carefully peeked around the edge of the tunnel to see where the light was coming from. Whatever was causing the light, was a long way down the tunnel, and appeared as a small, brightly lit archway. Just then, Cody’s helmet comm came on with static and a faint female voice.
“Cody. Do you read me?”
Cody froze. Could it be? He held up his arm to halt his men. They stopped and looked at him, their expressions unreadable with their helmets, but he could sense their apprehension in their body language.
“Cody. Do you read me?” the voice repeated, the signal coming in a little stronger.
“Trin,” Cody said with relief into his helmet comm. “I read you.”
“Cody! It’s good to hear your voice,” Catrin responded. He could hear the mirrored sound of relief in her words.
He knew his men couldn’t hear the conversation taking place in his helmet, so he switched on his external vocoder so they knew he had made contact.
“Trin, we’re in the mines,” He said. “We’re trying to find you.”
“Yes, Rex let me know that things didn’t quite go as planned up top. He said you and your men need a way out,” she explained.
“Remind me to thank Rex if we get out of this.”
His men exchanged looks and then looked back to Cody. They could only hear Cody’s side of the conversation but he could see some of the tension leaving their shoulders.
“I’m glad he has a way to contact me, otherwise I would have never known. I’ve been trying to reach you for the last hour. The signal isn’t great down here,” she explained.
“Well I’m glad you got through.”
“I’m glad you thought to use our back channel. The main frequency is compromised,” she took a breath, then continued, “How many of you are there?”
“Five total. Me and a squad of four men,” he answered.
“Alright, it should be easy enough to meet up,” she said in a thoughtful voice.
“We’re walking blind down here. Our maps don’t have the mining complex on it,” Cody explained.
“I’ll send over our data. Hold on.”
Cody pulled out his datapad and keyed it to the same comm frequency he was talking to Catrin on. Sure enough, a few moments later there was a ping noise as it asked him to confirm a data transfer from her.
“Got it,” he said as it finished downloading.
“Do you know which tunnel entrance you came in from the palace?” she asked. “If you do, hopefully you can figure out where you are.”
He opened the new holomap showing the mining complex. It was huge! He gestured to Churn to open his copy of the palace holomap. Churn opened his map, and soon they were comparing the two side-by-side.
“Trin, I can see where your map and ours line up. I know where we are,” Cody told her.
“Excellent. Mark the point and send it to me. I’ll try to find the best place for us to connect,” she instructed. He did as he was told, then waited.
After a few minutes, his datapad pinged again. He accepted the new info packet and added it to the holomap. It showed their location as a green dot, and Catrin’s location as a yellow dot. It showed two paths each group was meant to take to a spot they could meet. It also had hostile locations marked in red on the map as well. It looked like their route would take them past one enemy post. They’d have to figure out how to get past it.
“Does your route make sense?” Catrin asked.
“Yes. Any pointers on getting past that enemy post?”
“Most of them are just small groups of B1 battle droids. If you take them by surprise, you should be able to take them all out before they can trigger an alarm. Otherwise, this place is covered with old equipment, so it’s easy to sneak around. You’ll have to see what it’s like when you get there,” Catrin explained.
“Copy that. We’ll see you soon,” Cody said with confidence.
“Looking forward to it, Cody,” she replied, sincerity in her voice.